Am I alone in thinking that a giant inflatable banner, sponsored by the News of the World, is going to do very little to save Madeline McCann? Or, perhaps even more cynically, am I alone in believing that, even not so deep down, this is not the News of the World’s intention any longer?
Similarly, was there any genuine benefit in a myriad of local radio stations, including many in the North West, playing, in unison, an old Simple Minds song (“Don’t you forget about me”) on Bank Holiday Monday in order to highlight the case? A possible beneficiary might be Jim Kerr and co I imagine., but it will do little to further spotlight the case of the world’s most famous abductee.
I am not going to go down the route of speculating why this cute four-your old from a decent middle class family has caught the world’s attention in a way that hundreds of other children who have vanished in the meantime have not. That much is self-evident.
What I object to is the cavalcade of self-interested “well-wishers” who are exploiting this case to bask in reflected publicity. Whether they are doing it consciously or not, the media is now jam-packed with bleeding hearts wringing out their fellow feeling for the family by the column inch.
Whether setting up websites (with the legend “Sponsored by Infohost” at the bottom of each page) or publicly setting up the “Richard Branson Virgin Reward for the Return of Little Madeline”, this tragic event is being hijacked by a plethora of media and non-media businesses desperate to cash in on their self-consciously caring credentials.
“Let’s not buy the Sunday People this week,” say the weekend tabloid floaters, “Let’s invest in the News of the World instead– they care more about Little Madeline and have an inflatable banner.”
No doubt those involved in these activities will play the irreproachable get-out-of-jail free card – “We’re just doing our bit” in response to these fulminations, but I’m afraid I don’t believe that.
I find this the most nauseating attempt to cash in on the nation’s public grief since Diana died – although I suspect this August’s tenth anniversary “tissue with every issue” Princes Di why-oh-why chest-beating fest will set new records in this department.
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Tuesday, 3 April 2007
Tell me true, Mr J, why exactly do you do How-do...?
To say the North West of England was crying out for a new marketing and media web portal would hardly be akin to maintaining that it was crying out for a new guitar-based rock band with big hair and flares or a new city centre canal side café bar. But nor would it be apt to say, in the words of the almighty Tap, that it “filled a much needed gap”.
The truth, as is so often the case, lies rather dullishly in the middle.
Manchester has long been the UK’s second city of advertising and PR and, latterly, I dare say, design, too. It has understandably lagged behind Glasgow and Edinburgh as a broadcast and print centre, but its marketing communications credentials have remained sturdy.
With the advent of a mass enforced move by sundry BBC departments to sunny Salford, Manchester is truly moving to become a media force worth reckoning with in a way it has not been since the sixties. Technology and fashion then led national newspapers out of the city, whilst exactly the same forces, with a smattering of political expedience, have now driven broadcasters in.
Against such a backdrop, the mighty Nick Jaspan has chosen to launch his regional marketing web-portal - www. how-do.co.uk. Nick’s last enterprise was the sadly doomed North West Enquirer, launched and shut, with equal amounts of hyperbole, over the spring and summer of 2006. By comparison, how-do seems a modest enterprise.
The failure of Nick’s attempts to establish the Enquirer last year will see him as damaged goods by many in the cynical “best not to try, rather than risking failing” North West media world (a prevailing attitude that I suggest pre-doomed the Enquirer to a lack of local support in its vital first six months!). However, to others it will have raised Jaspan to a different level of awareness within NW business circles and certainly given him added gravitas as a North West media player (although admittedly a bloodied if unbowed one).
So will it work? As a venture, it’s comparatively low-cost in terms of launch. Most of the traffic will have been driven by Andy Spinoza’s PR campaign for the site, rather than by any off-line advertising. The contributors to the site, I dare say (aside from a sub and web designer) have worked on it as a labour of love.
The launch outlay then (and I’m only guessing here) is modest, but then so too, I guess are the rewards at present. The site carries a few banner ads, but nothing that would cover Mr. Jaspan’s lunch bills let alone provide a major financial foothold for expansion.
So what is behind Mr. Jaspan’s plans? Well, I suppose, there will be some potential revenue from branded training schemes, awards and events. To my mind, recruitment – the only reliable recruitment stream in this market place would be key.
With The Drum now increasingly paying only lip service to the city (both in terms of presence and coverage) and its team of pliable pre-pubescents hardly capable of demonstrating any great insight into the market and its future developments, the way is certainly open for another medium to grab reader attention and the still valuable recruitment market.
At present a would-be recruitment advertiser has three options – the Manchester Evening News, the London-based trade press or The Drum. All three have enormous drawbacks – the MEN is expensive and guarantees any recruitment advertiser in the “sexy” marketing communications and media sectors a score of wannabes and little else in terms of response
The London-centric trade press (Campaiagn, PR Week et al) have prohibitive page rates, an almost exclusively Soho-foccused readership and a subscription price beyond the pocket of target recruitees (account execs, studio managers, junior copywriters etc).
This has rather left The Drum to have the market to itself – the untimely demise of Adline (of which more in the near future), left outside of London recruitment an easy target for the Glasgow-based Carnyx Group (publishers of The Drum), but with their typical foresightedness, they managed two coups:
1) Firstly a push for subs (meaning that in most companies nobody now receives a copy and in the few that do it is only the chief exec and the head of new business that – neither prime targets for the likes of Suits, Orchard or even, god bless him, Peter Leonard)
2) Secondly they managed to alienate former Adline MD, Debbie Brown, (probably the person with the single best grasp of the highly fragmented regional recruitment market) to the extent that she stomped out of the Carnyx boardroom last year. Good move Gordon and Diane Young, the Statler and Waldorf of marketing publishing!
But I digress; I somehow suspect that even the lucrative recruitment market is not the key to Jaspan’s plans.
I think the clue may lie in the “how-do” name he has chosen for his new venture. Other commentators have commented on its Northern quaintness, but few have picked up on its flexibility in terms of extension into other markets (legal, financial, surveying, property etc – in fact anything in the business-to-business arena.)
“How-do” combines Northern-ness, networking and insider info (“How do I…? etc). I somehow suspect that a lack of support from the advertising and media community sank Nick’s last venture. By surreptitiously getting those same people on board very early in this embryonic new endeavor, he maybe heading them off at the pass and ensuring future support in other more lucrative markets…
But then, howdthefuckidknow.(co.uk) anyway?
(Well, even if I'm wrong, Mr J - it's not a bad plan now, is it?)
The truth, as is so often the case, lies rather dullishly in the middle.
Manchester has long been the UK’s second city of advertising and PR and, latterly, I dare say, design, too. It has understandably lagged behind Glasgow and Edinburgh as a broadcast and print centre, but its marketing communications credentials have remained sturdy.
With the advent of a mass enforced move by sundry BBC departments to sunny Salford, Manchester is truly moving to become a media force worth reckoning with in a way it has not been since the sixties. Technology and fashion then led national newspapers out of the city, whilst exactly the same forces, with a smattering of political expedience, have now driven broadcasters in.
Against such a backdrop, the mighty Nick Jaspan has chosen to launch his regional marketing web-portal - www. how-do.co.uk. Nick’s last enterprise was the sadly doomed North West Enquirer, launched and shut, with equal amounts of hyperbole, over the spring and summer of 2006. By comparison, how-do seems a modest enterprise.
The failure of Nick’s attempts to establish the Enquirer last year will see him as damaged goods by many in the cynical “best not to try, rather than risking failing” North West media world (a prevailing attitude that I suggest pre-doomed the Enquirer to a lack of local support in its vital first six months!). However, to others it will have raised Jaspan to a different level of awareness within NW business circles and certainly given him added gravitas as a North West media player (although admittedly a bloodied if unbowed one).
So will it work? As a venture, it’s comparatively low-cost in terms of launch. Most of the traffic will have been driven by Andy Spinoza’s PR campaign for the site, rather than by any off-line advertising. The contributors to the site, I dare say (aside from a sub and web designer) have worked on it as a labour of love.
The launch outlay then (and I’m only guessing here) is modest, but then so too, I guess are the rewards at present. The site carries a few banner ads, but nothing that would cover Mr. Jaspan’s lunch bills let alone provide a major financial foothold for expansion.
So what is behind Mr. Jaspan’s plans? Well, I suppose, there will be some potential revenue from branded training schemes, awards and events. To my mind, recruitment – the only reliable recruitment stream in this market place would be key.
With The Drum now increasingly paying only lip service to the city (both in terms of presence and coverage) and its team of pliable pre-pubescents hardly capable of demonstrating any great insight into the market and its future developments, the way is certainly open for another medium to grab reader attention and the still valuable recruitment market.
At present a would-be recruitment advertiser has three options – the Manchester Evening News, the London-based trade press or The Drum. All three have enormous drawbacks – the MEN is expensive and guarantees any recruitment advertiser in the “sexy” marketing communications and media sectors a score of wannabes and little else in terms of response
The London-centric trade press (Campaiagn, PR Week et al) have prohibitive page rates, an almost exclusively Soho-foccused readership and a subscription price beyond the pocket of target recruitees (account execs, studio managers, junior copywriters etc).
This has rather left The Drum to have the market to itself – the untimely demise of Adline (of which more in the near future), left outside of London recruitment an easy target for the Glasgow-based Carnyx Group (publishers of The Drum), but with their typical foresightedness, they managed two coups:
1) Firstly a push for subs (meaning that in most companies nobody now receives a copy and in the few that do it is only the chief exec and the head of new business that – neither prime targets for the likes of Suits, Orchard or even, god bless him, Peter Leonard)
2) Secondly they managed to alienate former Adline MD, Debbie Brown, (probably the person with the single best grasp of the highly fragmented regional recruitment market) to the extent that she stomped out of the Carnyx boardroom last year. Good move Gordon and Diane Young, the Statler and Waldorf of marketing publishing!
But I digress; I somehow suspect that even the lucrative recruitment market is not the key to Jaspan’s plans.
I think the clue may lie in the “how-do” name he has chosen for his new venture. Other commentators have commented on its Northern quaintness, but few have picked up on its flexibility in terms of extension into other markets (legal, financial, surveying, property etc – in fact anything in the business-to-business arena.)
“How-do” combines Northern-ness, networking and insider info (“How do I…? etc). I somehow suspect that a lack of support from the advertising and media community sank Nick’s last venture. By surreptitiously getting those same people on board very early in this embryonic new endeavor, he maybe heading them off at the pass and ensuring future support in other more lucrative markets…
But then, howdthefuckidknow.(co.uk) anyway?
(Well, even if I'm wrong, Mr J - it's not a bad plan now, is it?)
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
The Day The Music Di-ed
One of the many benefits of living in the PRC is the ubiquitous cheap DVDs and the almost complete disregard that even major stores demonstrate towards even a passing towards international copyright protocols.
This gives us benighted exiles, trapped with only one English language TV station, CCTV 9 (typical nightly viewing - "101 reasons why all the Japanese are evil and smell of fish" and "ok look, it's snowing in the UK and all their public transport is in the shit, still that's what you get for not living in a one-party communist country..."), something to watch.
Today's little foray into central Beijing (about 35 minutes on the subway), netted "The Last King of Scotland", "V for Vendetta", "The Prestige", "Night in the Museum","The Queen"and an 8 disk set of the whole four seasons of the BBC's Messiah (think gory evisceration and not Handel).
Now admittedly "Night in the Museum" is entirely in Russian (so has been swiftly filed with the 7 copies of "Batman Begins" that I bought before getting an English copy) but the whole lot only cost a grand total of 130 RMB (about eight pounds 70!).
"The Queen" was purchased at the request of Sandy, my Chinese girlfriend and provided tonight's viewing. And pretty enjoyable it was too, although I did marvel a little at the incredibly supportive portrayal of Mr Blair and some heavy-handed bollocks about a stag roaming the Highlands, pursued by a gun-toting but still grieving Harry and Wills which seem to become a symbol of Diana for the Queen.
Watching it took me back to 1997 and gave me a vague pre-shudder of the renewed Di-mania that, much to the glee of florists in the capital, will sweep across the UK this August.
I clearly remember coming downstairs, dreadfully hungover on that day in August and sitting with a mug of coffee (or perhaps a hair of the dog) and watching Sky News - which consisted mainly of sombre music and flowers outside some royal palace or other.
I took me a while to suss just which royal personage we were collectively mourning for. Obviously the Queen Mum ("The nation's favourite granny" (c) News International) was in pole position, with the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret and the Queen herself bringing up the rear.
The realisation that it was "Di what Died" sent me scurrying upstairs to tell my soon to be ex-wife the awesome news. And it was truly awesome, even to an ardent Di cynic like me - witness:
"Goodbye, enormous jeans,
that you would have had to wear,
If you hadn't had bulimia
And thrown up everywhere"
(copyright Me and Reg Dwight 1997).
Back in those days I was the editor of Birmingham-based advertising and media magazine (Adline) and purely by chance had to make a rare visit to London the next day.
I was going for two reasons:
a) To spend the day at the headquarters of Capital Radio
b) Because I fancied the arse of the admittedly off-puttingly hirsute boss of Capital Radio's Manchester sales house.
Admittedly, it was largely (b) to be honest but it was interesting to spend the day at the heart of a major London media owner at a time of such a national outpouring.
The interesting thing that I quickly noticed was that none of the music being played was produced later than 1982. Apparently this was because, like many of other radio groups, Capital had an approved list of chart hits that had been vetted as appropriate for times of national crisis. Obviously "Another one bites the dust" (particularly as it was by Queen) would not have been deemed appropriate listening for the tail-end of the Summer of 1997.
Unfortunately, no-one had got round to updating this list since the early eighties, leaving the grieving denizens of the capital to mourn along to to the likes of Hall and Oates and the Human League...
The station also had to vet all of its ads - especially as (allegedly) another station the group had followed its early morning news broadcast ("And now seven hours later, Princess Diana is still dead" etc) directly with an ad that said "And now that's enough bad news, here's the good news -its 15 per cent of sofas only today at all our stores...")
My own favourite was perpetrated by Sky One which, like most other TV broadcasters had pulled all its ads and merely showed some flowers outside the palace superimposed on a picture of Di and then accompanied by some sombre music during its ad breaks.
Unfortunately, after one one suitably dour commercial break, the announcer rather spoiled it with: "And now...back to the Simpsons..."
This gives us benighted exiles, trapped with only one English language TV station, CCTV 9 (typical nightly viewing - "101 reasons why all the Japanese are evil and smell of fish" and "ok look, it's snowing in the UK and all their public transport is in the shit, still that's what you get for not living in a one-party communist country..."), something to watch.
Today's little foray into central Beijing (about 35 minutes on the subway), netted "The Last King of Scotland", "V for Vendetta", "The Prestige", "Night in the Museum","The Queen"and an 8 disk set of the whole four seasons of the BBC's Messiah (think gory evisceration and not Handel).
Now admittedly "Night in the Museum" is entirely in Russian (so has been swiftly filed with the 7 copies of "Batman Begins" that I bought before getting an English copy) but the whole lot only cost a grand total of 130 RMB (about eight pounds 70!).
"The Queen" was purchased at the request of Sandy, my Chinese girlfriend and provided tonight's viewing. And pretty enjoyable it was too, although I did marvel a little at the incredibly supportive portrayal of Mr Blair and some heavy-handed bollocks about a stag roaming the Highlands, pursued by a gun-toting but still grieving Harry and Wills which seem to become a symbol of Diana for the Queen.
Watching it took me back to 1997 and gave me a vague pre-shudder of the renewed Di-mania that, much to the glee of florists in the capital, will sweep across the UK this August.
I clearly remember coming downstairs, dreadfully hungover on that day in August and sitting with a mug of coffee (or perhaps a hair of the dog) and watching Sky News - which consisted mainly of sombre music and flowers outside some royal palace or other.
I took me a while to suss just which royal personage we were collectively mourning for. Obviously the Queen Mum ("The nation's favourite granny" (c) News International) was in pole position, with the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret and the Queen herself bringing up the rear.
The realisation that it was "Di what Died" sent me scurrying upstairs to tell my soon to be ex-wife the awesome news. And it was truly awesome, even to an ardent Di cynic like me - witness:
"Goodbye, enormous jeans,
that you would have had to wear,
If you hadn't had bulimia
And thrown up everywhere"
(copyright Me and Reg Dwight 1997).
Back in those days I was the editor of Birmingham-based advertising and media magazine (Adline) and purely by chance had to make a rare visit to London the next day.
I was going for two reasons:
a) To spend the day at the headquarters of Capital Radio
b) Because I fancied the arse of the admittedly off-puttingly hirsute boss of Capital Radio's Manchester sales house.
Admittedly, it was largely (b) to be honest but it was interesting to spend the day at the heart of a major London media owner at a time of such a national outpouring.
The interesting thing that I quickly noticed was that none of the music being played was produced later than 1982. Apparently this was because, like many of other radio groups, Capital had an approved list of chart hits that had been vetted as appropriate for times of national crisis. Obviously "Another one bites the dust" (particularly as it was by Queen) would not have been deemed appropriate listening for the tail-end of the Summer of 1997.
Unfortunately, no-one had got round to updating this list since the early eighties, leaving the grieving denizens of the capital to mourn along to to the likes of Hall and Oates and the Human League...
The station also had to vet all of its ads - especially as (allegedly) another station the group had followed its early morning news broadcast ("And now seven hours later, Princess Diana is still dead" etc) directly with an ad that said "And now that's enough bad news, here's the good news -its 15 per cent of sofas only today at all our stores...")
My own favourite was perpetrated by Sky One which, like most other TV broadcasters had pulled all its ads and merely showed some flowers outside the palace superimposed on a picture of Di and then accompanied by some sombre music during its ad breaks.
Unfortunately, after one one suitably dour commercial break, the announcer rather spoiled it with: "And now...back to the Simpsons..."
Sunday, 28 January 2007
I once went to a Latvian Velodrome...
Perhaps unsurprisingly when you have a group of disparate nationalities in far eastern exile, a lot of time is spent talking absolute shite. This is partly because a group of people ranging in age from 22 to 43 and of national extraction embracing Canadian, American, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, English and New Zealandish don't actually have that much common ground.
Quite a lot time is spend talking about DVDs (Heroes, 24 and Will and Grace feature frequently at present), other time is spent planning putative trips to the Great Wall or the Lama Temple. There is also occasional discussion of the fiendish, inscrutable schemes of the Chinese Government.
The latest manifestation of this took place before Christmas - a small earthquake off the coast of Taiwan resulted in 95 per cent of China mainland Internet traffic grinding to a halt or stopping all together - it seems that all east-west on-line communication goes through one small tectonically vulnerable pipe in-between China and its territorially vulnerable neighbour.
Domestic traffic was unaffected and so the on-line forum pages of That's Beijing ( a sort of Time Out for Beijing, but with more ads for cute but financially challenged Chinese girls seeking well-off Western sugar daddies and less for lesbian pottery evenings) became home to Conspiracy Central - a hotbed of of our colonial cousin's theories as to the Real Reason why they couldn't access MSN.
The theories seemed to centre around the belief that the Chinese government somehow had something Big and Sneaky planned for the early part of 2007 but to achieve their wicked moustache-twirling aspirations it was vital that any 22-year old TEFL teacher from Ohio should be unable to upload pictorial cultural juxtapositions of themselves and less well-off Chinese folk on to their blogs.
Normal Service has now been restored, no doubt leaving the fuming inner circle of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) sat around slamming their firsts onto their boardroom table and exclaiming: "Drat and we would have got away with it all if that backpacker from Ottawa hadn't been able to email his mates humorous details of English language mis-spellings on the menu of a restaurant immediately adjacent to his YMCA!"
Actually, some of the mis-spellings are reasonably humorous (although admittedly insufficiently so to topple a single-party state with a highly entrenched power base). One of the common mistakes is the confusion between "crab" and "crap" with "Fried crap meat" on the menu often providing endless amusement for incomers.
The crap/crab one is so common that it can only be down to one of two things:
a) Mischievous and under-paid menu translators sneaking a crafty one past their unsuspecting (and unlikely to pay) employers.
b) An uncommon commitment to honesty by a cusinally-challenged restauranter.
Quite a lot time is spend talking about DVDs (Heroes, 24 and Will and Grace feature frequently at present), other time is spent planning putative trips to the Great Wall or the Lama Temple. There is also occasional discussion of the fiendish, inscrutable schemes of the Chinese Government.
The latest manifestation of this took place before Christmas - a small earthquake off the coast of Taiwan resulted in 95 per cent of China mainland Internet traffic grinding to a halt or stopping all together - it seems that all east-west on-line communication goes through one small tectonically vulnerable pipe in-between China and its territorially vulnerable neighbour.
Domestic traffic was unaffected and so the on-line forum pages of That's Beijing ( a sort of Time Out for Beijing, but with more ads for cute but financially challenged Chinese girls seeking well-off Western sugar daddies and less for lesbian pottery evenings) became home to Conspiracy Central - a hotbed of of our colonial cousin's theories as to the Real Reason why they couldn't access MSN.
The theories seemed to centre around the belief that the Chinese government somehow had something Big and Sneaky planned for the early part of 2007 but to achieve their wicked moustache-twirling aspirations it was vital that any 22-year old TEFL teacher from Ohio should be unable to upload pictorial cultural juxtapositions of themselves and less well-off Chinese folk on to their blogs.
Normal Service has now been restored, no doubt leaving the fuming inner circle of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) sat around slamming their firsts onto their boardroom table and exclaiming: "Drat and we would have got away with it all if that backpacker from Ottawa hadn't been able to email his mates humorous details of English language mis-spellings on the menu of a restaurant immediately adjacent to his YMCA!"
Actually, some of the mis-spellings are reasonably humorous (although admittedly insufficiently so to topple a single-party state with a highly entrenched power base). One of the common mistakes is the confusion between "crab" and "crap" with "Fried crap meat" on the menu often providing endless amusement for incomers.
The crap/crab one is so common that it can only be down to one of two things:
a) Mischievous and under-paid menu translators sneaking a crafty one past their unsuspecting (and unlikely to pay) employers.
b) An uncommon commitment to honesty by a cusinally-challenged restauranter.
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